Tom Clancy's HAWX Competitive Multiplayer Hands-on

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Dogfight with the best of 'em.

By Nate Ahearn

Over the last several months we've written numerous pieces about Tom Clancy's HAWX. From the single-player to the co-op, pretty much every inch of the sky has been covered as we set a course for our review which will hit the web on March 4. The one aspect that we've yet to touch on is the competitive multiplayer. While it is the lightest mode in terms of features, that doesn't mean that it isn't some of the most fun you'll have during your time with HAWX.

For starters, HAWX's multiplayer has only one mode (for now). It's the standard team deathmatch with eight players joining up for four-on-four action. Yes, there's a co-op mode which allows for some more creativity, but if you want to lay the smack down on actual human opponents, this is the only way. Anyway, from there you pick from one of a whopping 18 maps. Now I only got to play three of these for myself -- Los Angeles at night, Tokyo and Chicago -- but others include the Kennedy Space Center and Washington DC. All of these locations use the GeoEye technology to accurately map the locations.

It comes off fairly well, if not a little flat. It's clear that the satellite imagery provided was wrapped around objects so things have a tendency to look a little more rigid than they should. Still, there's a lot of land underneath you when you're 40,000 feet up, and it all looks fairly accurate (including Tokyo Disney).

So once you've picked your location, you've gone into your hangar and decided on a plane along with armaments and you've picked a round time and kill limit, it's finally time for you and your squadron to take to the skies.

First thing I was told to watch out for is enemies with long-range weapons. Typically both squads start out facing each other and if people have leveled up their pilots, that means that they'll have access to some serious long-range weaponry. Sort of like a sniper. It's good to stock your squad with a couple of those guys and a couple of air domination weapon packs.

The competitive multiplayer in HAWX is probably the purest and closest I've come to actually dogfighting in the game. I'm roughly four hours into the single-player and nothing has come close to soaring around with the three rival pilots locked on my six as I bank and try to maneuver my way out of their missile's target area. Dogfighting in multiplayer requires a lot of tenacity as other players don't let up the way the artificial intelligence does.

The real kicker of multiplayer comes into play once you've been playing for several minutes. For starters, leaders for each team are called out so players know who to gun for. When you do land a kill on a leader you'll get a nice little XP boost and an audio cue that lets everyone know what you did. On top of that, players who can get streaks of kills going will be rewarded with the game-changing support powers.

Support powers include: EMP Strike which sends all enemy planes into an almost unrecoverable stall; AWACS Support which improves range and effectiveness for your team's missiles and rockets; Missile Restriction limits opposing players to unguided weapons; Repair sends out repair bots to everyone on your team which can be targeted and shot down by the enemy; Jamming takes away targeting systems from the enemy; Cannon Upgrade improves the damage and range for all guns on your team; Radar Supression bans radar for the other team; and Altitude Limit deals damage to those above a certain height.

These support powers are really what make the multiplayer as much fun as it is. That, and the fact you can carry over your XP and rank into the multiplayer to earn rewards that can be taken back into solo play. Any progress you've made on certain challenges (like getting X amount of kills with guns or rockets) will carry back and forth and every support power you trigger will net you even more XP.

Tom Clancy's HAWX has only one multiplayer mode right now, but that could change (and we think it will) after the game launches on March 3. As it stands right now, the competitive multiplayer is fun, but it pales in comparison to the more engaging co-op mode.

Thrust into the cockpits of incredibly powerful and technologically advanced jet fighters, gamers benefit from hi-tech piloting assistance in this flight game inspired by the best-selling Tom Clancy titles.